- A Fleeting Ripple
beater paperbacks: kaweco palm green
The blinds are half down and the tall apartment building gives some shade, but the air conditioner struggles to cool down the office. These rooms were made to be someone’s house; the parquet floors are warm, the cream walls clean. Charming almost. Now they have unremarkable pine desks and locked file cabinets. The leather on the chairs is soft and cracked, they are the most welcoming thing in the room. Across an asphalt parking lot, there’s a few more tall buildings. Mostly homes with their lace curtains and dark blue shutters. Even a piece of the railway is visible, a train is waiting for its passengers. Perhaps thousands of windows of homes and offices out of the little window, with only one pine tree. Yet, the scene has a certain cosiness to it, the sun scorching decorative brick and fresh paint alike.
It’s proving to be a busy summer break for me since I came to my hometown. The myriad of different school and work tasks had accumulated for me to go through. It’s so hot that I’ve been afraid to step outside, which means I haven’t been to my favourite spots. Yet. I hope it’s a yet.
During this time, I’ve had two paperbacks I’ve been toting around; an English version of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and a Turkish translation of Madame Bovary. Most of my reading was on Kindle during my travels and I had missed holding a real book in my hand. I always underline my books -even on Kindle- and for paper books I tend to use a fountain pen. Mostly because I keep a fountain pen around for taking notes, so it’s easier not to switch between pens/pencils while reading. The colourful lines are much easier to search through in a book when I’m looking for specific quotes as well.
This week, I was using a lovely mid-green for this: Kaweco Palm Green in a cartridge. I know I wanted to only carry one pen. Life would’ve been so much easier if I was capable of carrying one pen. I’ll explain how well that experiment went later on, when I’m actually back.
Anyway, I think that Kaweco inks are genuinely underrated. Since I wanted to try them, I had ordered a few packs of cartridges to try out: Summer Purple, Palm Green and Midnight Blue. All of them turned out surprisingly well, but I liked Summer Purple so much that I ended up buying a whole bottle of it and giving away the cartridges to a friend’s sister. It’s always better to start them young…
The problem with Palm Green was that I’ve been spoiled rotten with much more interesting green inks. Murky greens, warm greens, almost yellow-greens and multi-shading greens. The only way I can describe it is as a mid-green. Everything is in the middle. The colour is extremely well-rounded. It’s not like the warm greens that I love, nor like the cool toned greens I cannot seem to warm up to. Not too bright, faded, murky or dark. It’s just a good middle ground in everything. This should be your first green ink, when you’re trying to decide whether you like using green inks or not. Then, you can explore into warmer greens if you like them or move away from the colour green forever.
There is some shading on the Maruman Mnemosyne paper I’m currently using, but absolutely no sheen. The gradient of the shading reminds me of fresh, light coloured palm leaves next to the older, darker ones. I like this ink, even when it seems slightly less up to my taste next to my fancier ones. I rarely reach for this one. I simply cannot decide whether to go for a full bottle or move away from it. I’m slowly running out of cartridges to try out. Perhaps cartridge-only is the way to go with this ink. That feels too wasteful…
Another impressive thing about this ink is its behaviour on paperback paper. It doesn’t feather much. It does spread and become a thicker line, show through a little. Not even a spot of bleed through as well. On regular paper, the ink is moderately wet. Just enough to keep the nib well lubricated and to show the shading.
The more I write and think about this ink, the more I seem to like it. Perhaps I never really thought about it; took its lovely colour and well-behaviour as granted. Expected. The colour is not distracting and the flow is well, which is all I really need for day-to-day. It’s currently inked in a Kaweco AL-Sport Paladin Evergreen since it matches the colour of the barrel perfectly. They make a lovely pair to write with.
Sometimes I wonder if regular daily life is better than holiday time. I was so caught up in life that I didn't have much time to hold a fountain pen last week, let alone write. As always, thank you for reading and your patience!